Masteries

Offense:
21

Defense:
0

Utility:
9

Introduction

Welcome to my Nocturne build! After trying some of the top rated builds on here for jungling, I could never find one that suited me very well. So, I decided to make my own. For now, this is strictly a jungling guide, I may add a laning one later, but IMO, Nocturne belongs in the jungle. His ult and ganking abilities are just too great to go unnoticed. This is my very first build, so go easy on me, and please leave any tips/criticism you have in the comments and don't forget to vote!

Pros / Cons

-Focused hard once you start tearing them apart
-Susceptible to CC if not careful
-Ult can be a hard thing to master
-Must know when to use spells at the right time for max success

Champion Abilities

This is the key ability to your jungling prowess. Just make sure you're around as many enemies as possible when this buff is up to make full use of it. It will keep you healed as well as do AoE damage. Its up only every 10 seconds, however, if you use your auto attacks on something, this cooldown reduces 1 second every hit. So the more attack speed, the more auto attacks, the more auto attacks, the lower cooldown on your passive.

Your Q ability. It is a skill shot that shoots out a trail, going through enemies and damaging everyone it hits. The trail is left for a few seconds and if Noc stands in it, he gains movement speed and attack damage. If it hits a champion however, they start to leave the trail behind where ever they run, which means this ability is a VERY good chasing tool so long as you can hit champions with it. There are a few different instances to use this. Such as: when you're at a tower doing damage, shoot the trail behind you, so that you get the attack damage buff, and have a good way out in case the enemy team decides to gank you.

Your spell shield. Basically, your personal Banshee's Veil. When you press W you get a spell shield for only a few seconds, so its only effective if you know something is coming your way. Be it an Ashe ult, Karthus ult, Ezreal skill shot, anything that a Banshee's can do, you just have to get the timing down on your own which will take some practice. But once you do, you will rarely die to things such as those pesky ults. Another nice thing that comes with this ability is passive attack speed. 20% at level one and increases by 5 every rank. Which is very very nice. And if you get the shield to block something, this % doubles for a short time.

Your fear. When you get someone with this, chains will come out and latch on to the enemy champion, giving them a little amount of damage over time, and if you keep them close enough for long enough, they get feared for a short duration. When you gank, and if you get this fear off on someone, they will more than likely be dead. This screws people up very badly 1v1, or if they are trying to get away and you manage to keep up with them long enough to keep the chains attached.

Noc's ult. This is what will make people furious. This is also the main reason Noc is more effective as a jungler than lane in my eyes. It has a very large radius, and when you first press it, it darkens the enemies maps so they can only see in their own field of vision, cutting off the vision from allies, allied towers and allied minions. When you press it again, you can dash to an enemy from a very large range dealing damage when you get to them. You can fly through nearly half the map when you rank this to 3. One thing I see first time Nocturnes doing is pressing R, but not dashing to someone. You HAVE to remember that you need to press R twice to get the dash to someone. Pressing it once will only darken the enemy's screens, failing to press it again within a 3-4 time span will have the ability go on cooldown and you won't be able to dash. So just remember that you need to press R TWICE.

Ability Rotation

So, now that you know all of Noc's abilities inside and out, how do we use them in situations?

The first time you will encounter needing to use your abilities will be against minions in the jungle. The first point you get is in Duskbringer (your Q) and thats mainly for the very nice attack damage bonus you get from standing in the trail. You'll want to hit the minions with it, then stand in the trail. The concept is exactly the same when facing enemy champions. Open with the Duskbringer, make sure you are in the trail. Off to a good start.

You've just hit your enemy with Duskbringer and are standing in the trail, now what? Well, if you're facing another champion 1v1, immediately follow up with a Unspeakable Horror (E) which will latch up those chains and cause some damage over time. They will be feared in a couple seconds for a few seconds, during this time, right click them down and keep hitting them with Duskbringer whenever it comes off cooldown. For team fights, I suggest waiting until you see someone that has an AoE ult such as Kat or Nunu and put your chains on them.

To know when to use your Shroud of Darkness (W) you really have to know the abilities your enemies have and you have to be good at predicting just when they will use said abilities, if you see a Sion stun coming your way for example, throw up your shield and get a nice attack speed buff. If there's a team fight breaking out, and you can't really watch any one champion, just throw up your shield after you get to the Unspeakable Fear part of your rotation.

Your ult should be used primarily to gank, but it can also be used to pick off people that manage to get away with low health. Its mainly just a thing to get a feel for yourself, so get out there and experiment!

TL;DR!
Ult in on a champion for a gank, hit them with Q to chase, stay on trail behind them, hit them with E, right click, W when you see a bad spell coming your way, profit.

Runes

NOTE: Runes are all personal preference and they are totally up to what the player feels are best. The following is what I choose to use with him and have the most success with.

Pretty straight forward stuff here:

Greater Mark of DesolationMarks of Desolation
Pretty standard for all physical damage carries. Gotta get past that armor before we can do work!

Seals of Alacrity
This is where you might be starting to question things. Why attack speed? Well, this build focuses a lot on attack speed, crit, and life steal. The more attack speed, the more of that you get. Plus, the attack speed helps early game in the jungle especially with your Shroud of Darkness Passive.

Glyphs of Alacrity
Same explanation as the seals. I don't feel that CDR runes are necessary seeing as Noc's cooldowns are pretty forgiving. Also, with having both seals and glyphs for attack speed, it lets us skip a few ranks on our W in the beginning to put it into the things that will help us gank better and not lose any attack speed for it.

Quintessences of Fortitude
These will help you out a ton in your early jungle game as well as make you a bit beefier to take down. This build doesn't focus a whole lot on protecting yourself, so these are a very welcome addition.

Summoner Spells

For jungling Nocturne, I feel that and are by far the best choices. With Ghost, you can move across the map quickly to get in range for your ult, or help chase someone down that has Duskbringer, or on the contrary, throw down Duskbringer away from the enemy, and Ghost while on it. There are many opportunities. Get creative! Smite is just jungling default. Pretty essential for Noc (although I have seen Nocturnes get by without it, I prefer to use it. Much safer, quicker, and more helpful).

Other Choices
Flash is a good summoner spell. But I just don't feel like its put best to use by Noc. Like I explained above, sometimes you are just a bit short of your ult range on a gank, and using flash won't help all that much for getting into that range, not compared with Ghost anyway.

Ignite is a good spell for all assassins, however, there just isn't any room for it with a jungle Nocturne (although it could possibly replace smite, but that's debatable).

Again, a great spell for assassins, but no room for it here.

Arguably a very good spell for Noc. See someone run into a bush and can no longer ult to them? No worries with clairvoyance! But, again, no room for it here. I feel that ghost and smite are put to better use.

Everything else is kind of meh and shouldn't really be looked at.

Items

You're gonna start out with a and 5 . Pretty standard for every jungler. Once you go through the first round of jungling (see Jungling Section below), head back and get a and a couple more (you'll have enough money for 1-2, and you should have at least 1 left over from your jungle route).

Once you have cleared red buff and have 300-400 gold, head back and finish off .

From here on out is pretty straight forward. Start those ganks early, and get ahead in your build and you will be unstoppable. One of the key things with Noc is to get ahead early, so you can't be stopped later. A BIG way to do this is through a successful jungling.

NOTE: Once you get your you HAVE to make sure you have that ward up at dragon. It helps your mid and bot laners, and helps you see when their jungler goes in for the dragon kill for an easy smite steal or even a gank.

Next grab a for some extra life steal. With all this life steal now, solo'ing dragon should be cake. (At this point you should be level 9 or 10 if you're doing it right)

I rush the because its just such a great item for Nocturne. It supports his passive greatly, and when you get those stacks up, you get a nice +40 damage and a ton of life steal. Bloodthirster + Wriggle's + your passive, and people will have a hard time taking you down.

The next obvious choice is . It gives great attack speed, crit chance, and movement speed. All of which are very nice to have on Noc. With your runes, masteries, and passive from , you'll be hitting very fast.

Next up is . It gives you a bit of CDR, attack damage, and more crit chance. This is what will get you ahead in almost any 1v1. DON'T FORGET TO USE THE ACTIVE. The active on ghostblade is amazing, and will net you kills, very quickly.

By this point, you should have PLENTY of minion kills. Hopefully you are the furthest ahead. And this means that the game has been going on for a while, and people will know of your strong presence and start focusing you. So, its time to get a little defensive! There are a few different choices here to take. I personally take the because I like to get the extra health, damage, and the slow on hits makes it nearly impossible for anyone to get away. But you could buy a or even a if they are building AP and you want some resist.

Side note:The reason I don't get a Banshee's Veil in this build is that I honestly just don't find it very necessary for Nocturne, assuming that you are good. Sure, it gives you more MR, but I just can't justify slowing down the damage build. You have a Banshee's as an ability. You just have to know when to use it. If you do, there should be no reason for a Banshee's. It's a much longer CD, and its just more gold out of the way of your damage.

If for some chance, the game is still going by this point, congratulate the other team for putting up with you for so long. Because at this point, you should be 3-4 shotting squishies and tearing apart tanks. For the final nail in the coffin, I choose to sell my and replace it with an . At this stage of the game, Wriggle's is pretty useless compared to early game, and with I.E. your crits will destroy entire teams in just a few hits.

Jungling

Okay, here's one of the biggest and most important parts of this guide. Having a successful jungler can be the difference between a win and a loss for your team. The key thing here is to always be killing something. The easiest and fastest way to becoming the overwhelming unstoppable force that carries games is to farm, farm, farm. You want your minion score to be the highest in the game by the end. Do this, and I guarantee that you will be rolling kids.

First and foremost, the tool that allows Nocturne to be a successful jungler is by far his passive. allows you to get life steal from every enemy around you. To fully utilize this great passive, you want to be within range of every monster in the camp you are killing. This is pretty hard not to do, and most people don't even have to try to achieve this, but this is just something you have to make sure of, especially in those first few crucial levels.

Because of Noc's ult, you can stay in the jungle the entire game if you so desire, only coming out when people are low, or ult'ing people when you get the buffs. The majority of the game will be spent with the enemy team having NO clue where you are. This is the main point of what makes Noc so incredibly dangerous. Remember to keep this in mind.

When I jungle, I like to stay out of sight as much as possible. The less they know where you are, the better you're off. As always with junglers, gank often, and always be watching your lanes and have communication with your team to step in the lane if someone needs to B.

Now, for the jungling route:
Start off with cloth armor and 5 health pots, head to golems.

1. Golems Make sure you hit both of them with Duskbringer (to do this, you will have to stand sideways at an angle to them). Smite one, and focus that one down, then hit the other. You may Duskbringer one more time, but no more than 2. Health Pot if needed. Throw a point into Shroud of Darkness when you level up for that passive attack speed.

2. Wraiths Head straight up to the wraiths, and position yourself so that you can hit 3 of them with Duskbringer. Focus the blue one so that your passive hits the other 3. You should only use 1 Duskbringer here and possibly 1 health pot, hold off on it if you can though.

3. Wolves Head across mid to get to the wolves. Shoot your Duskbringer through the wall so that you hit all 3 wolves and stand on the trail while you hit them down, making sure your passive hits all 3. Use another health pot. When you get level 3, one more point into Duskbringer.

4. Blue Buff[/u] You should have 2 levels in Duskbringer and 1 point into Shroud of Darkness at this point, and also 2 health pots to spare. Shoot your Duskbringer into blue and stand on the trail and in the middle of the 3 mobs so your passive hits all 3. Smite blue, and use a health pot. You should be able to get by while saving 1, but its fine if you need that last one.

5. Back By now you should have roughly 435 gold, head back and pick up a long sword, and 1 more health pot.

6. Golems Again Same thing as before, hit them both with Q and auto attack them down, but SAVE YOUR SMITE. We'll need that for red. Upon reaching level 4, throw a point into Unspeakable Horror for a fear.

7. Red Buff Shoot your Duskbringer into the crowd of minions, and focus the red buff. Smite it and cast Unspeakable Horror on it, auto attack it until its dead.

Here is where it comes to your own personal judgement. I like to go back and finish off the wraiths and wolves again, and then from that moment on be on constant lookout for ganking opportunities. By this point in the jungle you should be level 5, if not very close. And if you did it fast enough, you will be keeping up with the solo lanes in levels.

KEY NOTE: As I have said before, getting that ward up at dragon with Wriggle's Lantern is very important. It helps everyone on your team. Even though you may not be able to get dragon at this point, (I suggest waiting until level 9-10 when you get your boots, Wriggle's, and a vamp. scepter to get dragon), it helps your laners bot and mid look out for a gank, and helps you see if they are going in for dragon to which your team can group up and gank. DO NOT blindly charge down into river if there are MIA's. Be cautious all the time as the enemy team always loves to find junglers that aren't prepared.

Scores

The one loss was a 4v5 from the beginning that was surrendered at 20. /facepalm

If you guys would like to message me some screenshots of your scores with this build, feel free to do so!

League of Legends is a team based, real time strategy game set in a mythical world of swords & magic where epic battles decide the fate of mystical nations. Game players take on the role of a Summoner who conjures and controls champions to fight for them at the Institute of War. During game play champions gain experience and items to enhance their skills and abilities. How players develop and play their champions can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a glorious victory!